Against Home Rule (1912) eBook

Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would
be followed by an uprising of popular independence
which would destroy the power of the Roman Church
in Ireland. Let those who think this consider
that the more independent spirits among the Irish
Roman Catholics go to America, and let them further
consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec
in Canada. The immense strength of the bonds—­religious,
social, and educational—­by which the mass
of the people in the South and West of Ireland are
held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system,
and the power which would be exerted by the central
authority of that system by means of the recent decrees,
make it certain that clerical domination would, from
the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament.

There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy
and people who form the Church to which the writer
belongs than that they should be enabled to live at
peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen,
and work in union with them, for the good of their
country and the promotion of that new prosperity which
recent years have brought. They dread Home Rule,
because they know that, instead of peace, it would
bring a sword, and plunge their country once again
into all the horrors of civil and religious strife.

THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE

(ii) THE NONCONFORMIST VIEW

BY REV. SAMUEL PRENTER, M.A., D.D. (DUBLIN),

Moderator of General Assembly of Presbyterian Church
in Ireland in 1904-5.

For obvious reasons, the Religious Difficulty under
Home Rule does not receive much attention on the political
platform in Great Britain. But in Ireland a religious
problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy.
This religious problem creates the cleavage in the
Irish population, and is the real secret of the intense
passion on both sides with which Home Rule is both
prosecuted and resisted. Irishmen understand
this very well; but as Home Rule, on its face value,
is only a question of a mode of civil government,
it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to
British electors. They say, What has religion
got to do with Home Rule? Home Rule is a pure
question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively
political lines. Even if this were so, might
not Englishmen remember that the Nationalist Members
of Parliament have been controlled by the Church of
Rome in their votes on the English education question?
I mention this to show that under the disguise of
pure politics ecclesiastical authority may stalk in
perfect freedom through the lobbies of the House of
Commons. Is it, then, an absolutely incredible
thing that what has been done in the English Parliament
in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised
in the name of politics in a Home Rule Parliament?
That such will be the case I shall now attempt to
show.

Let us begin with the most elementary facts.
According to the official census of 1911 the population
of Ireland is grouped as follows:—­